Saturday, December 14, 2013

Staunton,
December 14 – In the latest indication that Circassian opposition to the Sochi
Olympics is far more widespread that Moscow claims and that Russian President
Vladimir Putin is afraid of it, Russian officials yesterday arrested at least
nine Circassian activists in the North Caucasus who oppose holding the Games
on the site of the genocide of their people in 1864.

Indeed,
it appears that Putin had to replace the governor of Kabardino-Balkaria to get
his way: Arsen Kanonkov apparently refused to carry out the arrests on trumped
up charges, while the new man, Yuri Kokov, who earlier helped create an FSB
unit to fight “extremism,” was entirely prepared to follow Putin’s line and
deployed massive numbers of security officers.

But
the arrests are not the end of the story: Circassians in the region plan demonstrations
this weekend, and this wave of arrests likely will re-invigorate the
anti-Circassian movement not only there but internationally, possibly prompting
activists to step up their demands that the West hold Moscow accountable at the
Olympics.

On
Friday, pro-Moscow officials in KBR are known to have arrested Ibragim Yaganov,
Ruslan Kabiyev, Ruslan Kesh, Yevgeny Tashu, Acumij Hilmi, Amin Zeh, Adnan
Khuade, Ali Bghane, and Almir Abreg.Kesh and Tashu have been released but the others remain in
detention.

As it has done
so often in the past, Moscow is behaving far more brutally in regions where
there are few outside journalists, confident that it can suppress much of the
story or at least put its own spin on it with commentaries that few outsiders
will be able to check and then challenge.